During the summer of 1963, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were driving on a trip to perform together. During the trip, an incident occurred that would inspire one of Dylan’s great songs, “When the Ship Comes In.”
A Hotel Stop
On the road, Dylan and Baez were in ragged clothes when they stopped at a hotel for the night. At this point in their careers, Joan Baez was the more famous of the two nationally. Dylan, however, still was highly regarded in the folk community, had recorded two albums, and had his songs covered by several artists.
The motel clerk recognized Baez and gave her a room, even though she was not wearing any shoes. But the clerk refused a room to Dylan because of his scraggly appearance. Baez was angry and stepped in on Dylan’s behalf, persuading the clerk to give a room to her unkempt companion.
It must have been difficult for Dylan to face the rejection and then have to be saved by Baez. His embarrassment must have been magnified because he was just starting — or hoping to start — a relationship with her.
When the Ship Comes In
For someone with Dylan’s talents, though, the best revenge was his music. That night, in his hotel room, in his anger and humiliation, Bob Dylan sat down and began writing the following words:
A song will lift
As the mainsail shifts,
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline;
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck,
The hour that the ship comes in.
When the Ship Comes In (live) – Bob Dylan (press play)
His new song, “When the Ship Comes In,” was a song of revolution that came out of a personal slight that evening. And Dylan was not in a forgiving mood. He sang about the forthcoming change where chains will bust and fall to “be buried at the bottom of the ocean,” elevating his slight into something Biblical:
Then they’ll raise their hands,
Sayin’ we’ll meet all your demands;
But we’ll shout from the bow “your days are numbered,”
And like Pharaoh’s tribe,
They’ll be drowned in the tide;
And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.
The March on Washington
Not many weeks after the motel incident, Dylan and Baez performed “When the Ship Comes In” at the March on Washington in August of 1963. So the song born out of pique at a hotel clerk took stage alongside Martin Luther King Jr. when he gave his “I Have a Dream” Speech.
Thus, Dylan’s song framed MLK’s speech with the warning, “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
Revolution
Revolutions are often borne out of personal slights. But personal slights are often symbols of the system, so there is nothing wrong with such a genesis.
One instigation for the American Revolution was a tax on tea, but the tax was symbolic of something deeper. The Occupy Wall Street movement was fueled partly by people fed up with a system that had slighted them individually. Similarly, one can look at recent protests around the world to see movements that started small and grew into something unfathomable.
The year after Dylan wrote “When the Ship Comes In,” the song appeared on Dylan’s The Times They Are A-‘Changin’ (1964) album, his first album of all original songs. Some of the themes of “When the Ship Comes In” are echoed in the title song of the album: “There’s a battle outside ragin’;/It’ll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls.”
Maybe the battle does not rage in the U.S. like it did in the 1960s, but it still continues here and around the world.
And that’s the story behind the song.
Bonus Source Information: In Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home
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(1974). More recently, Britney Spears released a song called “
(2011), although for some reason I don’t think the song has anything to do with gas prices and gas shortages (“Your touch, burning me / It’s too much, gasoline”).
